


Antique

by captainoutoftime



Category: Agents of SHIELD - Fandom, Avengers, Captain America
Genre: PTSD, Panic Attack, fledgling-SHIELD is led by Coulson, maybe kinda implied simmons/steve but tbh i don't know? it might be a brotp?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 01:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2330231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainoutoftime/pseuds/captainoutoftime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Captain America can't always cover up Steve. Sometimes there are cracks in the shield. Some people spend their whole lives fixing things, and little cracks aren't a big deal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Antique

 

He only has one panic attack in front of people. One crack in the shield, just one.

The other ones happen in the dark usually, in his quiet apartment that no music and no décor can fill. Alone. The fractures only show on the inside. The only place where Captain America can be weak is the place where no one can see him. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, it makes no sound. If a hero falls and no one can see, the colors stay bright.

He’s fine through the back-to-back missions he makes himself lead, even after spending another sleepless night looking for Bucky. He’s fine until they start playing the tapes. He did ask to see them, but he’s wishing he hadn’t. Steve watches in the room full of officials, watches with eyes that have not rested in three full days, watches Bucky scream and scream and scream as they’re ripping his body apart and his memories away and for so long he’s screaming Steve, Steve, Steve, until he’s not, and he’s just screaming, and he has no numbers to repeat and no identity and it’s Steve’s fault because he didn’t reach and Bucky’s still screaming because

It’s a woman with soft hands and a gentle voice who holds Steve’s shoulders, speaks to him quietly. He can’t understand a word. It’s a garbled mess of soft-sharp, accented vowels and Captain Captain Captain what is a captain he’s not he can’t be because captains lead and keep the team together he’s a failure just look what he let happen to Bucky who had picked him for his team first all the time even though he was always picked last look how he let his best teammate fall a captain would never do that. Her voice is a little shaky, but it’s so gentle, and her hands are soft on his shoulder, softly cupping his cheek, brushing away wetness from under his eyes. He can’t react to captain. Captain America is so unreachably far from him right now.

She lands on the right label after only a few moments of unanswered pleas. “Steve? Steve?” Her voice sounds just like Peggy’s. Just like it. He’s not sure if that makes it better or worse, but it sure makes the sound easy to focus on. “Steve, breathe. Take a deep breath for me, alright? You’re okay,” she insists, pushing his hair back in short, nervous strokes that somehow still comfort him. Just not enough.

"I can’t, I can’t, I can’t," he gasps, hands making the metal arms of the chair groan as they bend, leaving finger-shaped indents that don’t reveal how badly he’s shaking.

Her gentle voice becomes a bit firmer, directed to someone else. Steve doesn’t hear most of it- oxygen mask, night-night, shock blanket- but don’t they know he’s not in shock, he’s in sadness, he’s in guilt, he’s breaking apart because who lets this happen to another person who just allows their best friend to suffer this way, especially when they were always the protector, he had one chance, one, and he failed, failed, failed. His wild eyes don’t leave the screen, and the gentle-voiced woman seems to notice. “Shut it down,” she orders, and Steve is almost thrown into a flashback- she sounds so very much like Peggy, so much like the woman who used to be his best girl before she grew up and Steve didn’t. “Shut it down, right now.”

  
The screen goes dark and Steve lets out a single sob that burns the whole way out. He feels like he’s falling from the sky as he slips off the front of his chair, onto his knees. “Shh,” she soothes, soft hands cupping his cheeks. “Steve. Shh, it’s alright. You’re alright. I’m going to take care of you, alright?”

He believes her. Most of the doctors SHIELD made him go see say similar things- that they just want to help, and to please open up, but they make him talk about things that make him feel like he’s underwater. He believes the gentle-voiced woman, who resonates with sincerity. She will help him breathe. Steve nods once, more of a jerk of the neck than anything else, but it makes her smile, just a little, a tiny encouragement.

Then the shivers start, and Steve feels like he’s freezing to death. Again. He knows he’s not. He’s quite sure of it. But his skin is crawling with goosebumps and he can’t feel his toes and violent shivers are shaking his powerful frame. She grabs a lovely, warm, sunset-colored blanket from a fidgety man and tucks it around his shoulders, not questioning why it is cold that plagues him when the temperature of the room is pleasant. “There you are,” she murmurs, hugging him tightly, protectively, almost. Her arms wrap around his shoulders, over the giant, thick blanket that is the color of a rusting pipe. “There you are. You’re alright. You’re safe now.”

Steve curls into her, and he has never felt so small. He hates feeling so weak. He hates this stupid, ugly neon-orange blanket that he can’t let go of. He hates the eyes on him. He hates hating, but he burns with it, almost hot enough to melt the ice on his skin. True hatred is a slow burn, but shame is a flash fire, and it is sheer humiliation that slaps him out of his panic.

What would Erskine think of you now? You were meant for more than this. You owe it to Bucky, to Erskine, to Peggy. You can’t give up here.

He sits up slowly. He declines the oxygen mask that is offered. He searches for Cap to come cover up how frightened Steve is. He composes himself. He apologizes. He gives the blanket back. He stands. He leaves, and they do not send someone to follow him, but someone does anyway.

Steve knows he wasn’t sent, because he’s the sender now. Director Coulson comes- not with sympathy, a doctor’s card, judgement, disgust- he comes with a mission, and Steve couldn’t be more thankful. “HYDRA bases all over the globe are being systematically eliminated. It’s not another organization, it’s not even a hit squad. It’s a single man.”

He doesn’t have to say more. Steve knows who it is, because it’s the only person with the skills and knowledge to be doing it. And Steve had to find him.

"We’re trying to track him, amongst other operations," Phil explains. "Want in?"

Steve nods, even smiles a little. He is useful again. Cap is back up front, smoothing things over in his confident, professional way. “I’ll pack my stuff.”

When he gets onto the plane and leans to drop his things in a bunk, he catches the sound of a voice with sharp-soft accents on the vowels and nearly bumps his head as he turns to see. The gentle-voiced woman is bickering good-naturedly with the fidgety man, and Steve can’t help but stare. What’re the odds? But here she is. He meets her more formally as the rest of the team congregates in the control room of the plane they’ve lovingly nicknamed ‘The Bus’.

Her name is Jemma, and she does not look at him like a cracked antique.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, your comments/questions/kudos are appreciated, and as always, I'd consider continuing this one shot into a series if there was interest. Thanks!


End file.
